G. I. Bones

14

This time it happened more publicly.

Two Korean men had been in the office of Mr. Sung, also known as Mulkei. Mulkei, literally translated, means “water dog.” Its dictionary meaning though is “fur seal” or “otter.” Sung was a small man, full of pep, and years ago some G.I. had mistranslated his Korean nickname and started calling him “Water Doggy.” The name stuck and that’s what Sung had been called ever since, by both Koreans and Americans. The two visitors had come to see him supposedly about a rewiring project they were going to undertake on the building adjacent to the Lucky Lady Club. They told some of the other employees that they wanted Water Doggy to be aware that construction would be going on and they were hoping to make arrangements that would not be disruptive to the operations of the Lucky Lady Club. The club was one of the biggest money-makers in Itaewon. While the two men discussed the construction project with Water Doggy, three women entered the club. They weren’t your regular Lucky Lady customers. They were not young prostitutes because they were dressed in thick-soled shoes and trousers and heavy jackets as protection from the frigid winter weather outside. When one of the waitresses asked politely what she could do for them, the lead woman merely pointed to the back office and kept walking, averting her face and keeping her hood pulled over her head.

The waitresses hadn’t seen the faces of any of the women. They had purposely kept their features concealed.

Seconds later, voices were raised in the office. The cocktail waitresses weren’t unduly alarmed. Water Doggy argued with any number of people. Besides, they were paid to look nice and wait tables, not interfere with business dealings. Just as quickly as the voices had been raised, the office went quiet. Minutes later the two impostor electrical contractors and the three hooded women emerged. No one thought anything about it.

G.I. s were off duty now and even though they had to brave snowdrifts and icy roads, they were gradually beginning to arrive in Itaewon. Groups of them, mostly regulars, were entering the Lucky Lady Club, doffing their hats and coats, dusting off snowflakes, taking their seats and ordering the Korean-made Oscar sparkling wine or brown bottles of OB Beer. The cocktail waitresses were flirting with them, the band was mangling some monotonous rock tune, and the business girls were lurking in the shadows waiting for the alcohol to take effect on their G.I. prey.

Everything was normal at the Lucky Lady Club. And elsewhere in Itaewon. The power outages had been fixed, the snow had stopped falling-at least for the moment-and, as yet, word of the murder of Auntie Mee had not spread to the general population.

Everything was normal, that is, except for in the office of the Lucky Lady Club.

On her way to the women’s latrine, one of the waitresses noticed something in the dim light of the hallway: a dark liquid seeping from beneath Water Doggy’s closed office. She walked past it at first, finished her business in the bathroom and then, upon returning, knelt to take a closer look at the liquid. At first, she thought Water Doggy had spilled coffee or broken a bottle of liquor. But as she leaned closer, the meaty odor of the fluid filled the air and she realized that it was thick and not flowing quickly and when the rotating glass bulb hanging above the dance floor finally cast a beam of pure white light on the floor in front of her, she realized the true color of the liquid. Red.

She screamed. At first, no one heard her scream above the din of the rock and roll so she kept screaming and soon the cashier and the bartender shoved her aside and kicked in the office door and found, crumpled atop his desk, the mangled and slashed body of Mulkei, the man G.I. s called Water Doggy.

Captain Kim surveyed the murder scene with all the grim concentration of a demon evaluating an invoice from Beelzebub.

“Same-same Horsehead,” I said.

Captain Kim grunted but did not answer.

There were numerous stab wounds on the body of Water Doggy. Three different implements had been employed was my guess but I couldn’t be sure without actually touching the wounds and measuring their width and depth. But that wasn’t my job. As usual, I was here simply as an observer for 8th Army, at the tolerance of Captain Kim. Just the fact that he allowed me to observe the murder scene told me that he didn’t believe for a minute the charges that Lieutenant Pong from the 8th Army KNP liaison officer had leveled against Ernie and me. There were factions within the Korean National Police, many of them, and my experience with Captain Kim was that he was so stubborn and opinionated and protective of his Itaewon turf that he formed a major faction of the KNPs all by himself.

Lights were brought in to illuminate the scene for the evidence gathering team. They weren’t an independent group because Captain Kim hovered over them, barking orders. After a couple of hours he left one of his lieutenants in charge of the crime scene and made the trip that no cop anywhere in the world wants to make: to the home of the victim, in order to officially notify Water Doggy’s wife and his family of what had happened. He didn’t ask me to go along and I certainly didn’t volunteer. Regardless of what type of dissolute life Water Doggy had led, regardless of what crimes he’d committed, and regardless of what his wife might’ve put up with while living with him, telling her that he was dead was not going to be easy.

Water Doggy’s office didn’t tell us much. There didn’t seem to be anything missing. A cashbox in the bottom drawer of his desk was unmolested. The furnishings in his office weren’t nearly as elaborate as in the office of Snake, or even Jimmy Pak. What Water Doggy had that his fellow Seven Dragons did not have was a long leather couch across from his desk. Plenty long enough for the diminutive Water Doggy to lie down on and still have enough room for one of the leggy cocktail waitresses to join him. Or at least that’s what I imagined but that’s the way my thoughts were going since I’d spent the night with Doctor Yong In-ja.

The effect of Water Doggy’s demise on the waitresses and bartenders and the cashier of the Lucky Lady Club was devastating. They stopped working and huddled in front of the bar, hugging one another, whispering and staring at the cops and medical personnel entering and exiting Water Doggy’s office. The band packed up its instruments and left. The G.I. customers hung around for a while until the novelty of being near a crime scene wore off. And then the word of Water Doggy’s brutal murder began to spread throughout Itaewon.

When I walked outside, I paused on the cement porch of the Lucky Lady Club and surveyed the street. The snow had stopped falling but still lay in drifts against brick walls topped with rusty barbed wire. Neon still flashed up the strip but in the dark environs of Hooker Hill the women stood in front of their little wooden gates, concerned faces lit by dim streetlamps. In front of the nightclubs, G.I. s and business girls huddled in groups, talking and occasionally glancing in the direction of the Lucky Lady Club. Beneath the floodlamps at the entrances to the Seven Club and the King Club, groups of uniformed waitresses, canting round cocktail trays against their hips, gossiped and nodded their heads and twitched their necks spasmodically in the direction of the Lucky Lady Club.

When I stepped off the porch and started walking forward, people backed away as if I were contaminated with some hideous communicable disease.

“Water Doggy,” they whispered. Or “Horsehead” or “Two Bellies.” And now, finally, I was hearing them whisper the name “Auntie Mee.” Some of them cried, their eyes riveted on me as if searching for an answer. I didn’t have one. The only thing I knew for sure was that the village of Itaewon was cursed. Not by the supernatural, as the late Auntie Mee had claimed, but by people who were filled with a murderous rage. And by gauging the looks of the business girls and G.I. s and cocktail waitresses all around me, the village of Itaewon was about to reach the stage of full-fledged panic.

I stood at a wooden counter alone, slurping down a cold mug of beer at a new joint on the edge of Itaewon called the OB Stand Bar. I wanted to be alone, away from G.I. s, away for a while even from the English language. I wanted time to think. The OB Stand Bar stood near a major bus terminal and, as such, commuters came in here for a quick drink. There were no chairs, just tall tables for standing and a long counter that ran around the edge of the rectangular shaped room. Most of the customers were either reading Korean newspapers or staring into space. A few talked quietly with friends but there were no Americans here. Only Koreans. And as I was the only American, I was left alone. Nobody interrupted me and I had, at last, some time to ponder the madness I‘d seen in the last few days.

I wanted to think about the evidence I’d seen, about the crime scenes, about who would have the motive to murder four people. Instead, what I thought about was Doc Yong. About the night we’d spent together. About the subtle, soft curves of her body. About her smooth fresh skin. About the moonlight illuminating her face as she leaned back, eyes closed, concentrating on ecstasy. I had to get her out of my mind, at least long enough to think about what was going on here in Itaewon.

With an effort of will, I did.

Four murders. All of them had started when Ernie and I uncovered the bones of Technical Sergeant Flo Moretti. It was as if by pulling out those bricks and making a hole in that wall, I’d not only unleashed twenty-year-old air, I’d also unleashed the spirit of Mori Di himself. A spirit that was insisting on revenge. Of course that was silly but the fact was undeniable that exposing the bones of Moretti to this new era had set off a chain of events that resulted in multiple deaths: Two Bellies, Horsehead, Auntie Mee, Water Doggy. And a trio of hooded women assisted by two men had committed at least two of the murders. Were both murders committed by the same two men and the same three women? I had to assume so. The method of operation in both instances was the same: brutal, efficient, and full of rage. The two men, Horsehead and Water Doggy, had been hacked to death and if their bodies had been chopped up any more they would’ve fallen apart like so many chunks of pulverized meat. But what of Two Bellies? No chopping there, just a single slice through the throat and gradual exsanguination as the victim gasped unsuccessfully for air. An ugly way to go. Maybe worse than being hacked to death. The victim is aware, probably, that there’s no hope but can look around, wishing that he could breathe, wishing that there wasn’t a huge gash in his neck. Staring, probably, at the person who’d just slashed him. It was those few seconds while he was still alive that frightened me.

Two Bellies didn’t struggle with her executioner. Or at least there was no evidence that she had. And neither had Auntie Mee, although she’d been slowly strangled. Both women had accepted their fates. There was no escape. And since both of the women lived their lives at the bottom, or very near the bottom, of a strict Confucian hierarchy, they allowed the sentence of death to be carried out.

Two types of killing, two types of victims. Unlike Auntie Mee and Two Bellies, the other two victims were men who’d grabbed life by the throat, shaken it, and demanded money, power, and prestige. Neither Horsehead nor Water Doggy had acquiesced in their deaths. Horsehead had been either drugged or extremely drunk-or both-and he’d been tied up. Water Doggy was a small man and had shouted and fought, but had been overwhelmed by the two men and three women crowded into his office.

Men like Horsehead and Water Doggy had made many enemies in their lives. Was it a coincidence that these two men and three women were seeking revenge at the same time that Ernie and I had uncovered the bones of Technical Sergeant Flo Moretti?

Something about all this bothered me but I hadn’t quite put my finger on what it was when I realized that someone was tugging on my sleeve. I set my beer mug down and turned around.

Miss Kwon stared up at me.

She still had the crutch beneath her left arm and her ankle was still enveloped by a plastic brace and a gauze patch still covered her left eye. But she seemed alert and concerned and busy.

“You come,” she said.

“How’d you find me?” I asked.

She waved her right hand in the air and twirled it slightly. “This Itaewon. Everybody see everybody. Bali bali you come.” Come quickly.

“Why?”

“Jimmy Pak. He want talk to you.”

I sipped on my beer. “Are you working for Jimmy Pak these days?”

“Yes.” Miss Kwon pulled a wadded bill out of the pocket of her skirt. Five thousand won, about ten bucks. “He pay me taaksan money find you. Now you come.”

“Maybe I don’t want to see him.”

“You have to,” she said, staring at me with her moist brown eyes as if I were an idiot to whom everything had to be carefully explained. “He know about bones.”

I sat up straighter on my stool. “He told you that?”

She nodded vehemently.

“Where are they?” I asked.

She looked disappointed. “I don’t know. You talk Jimmy Pak. He tell.”

“OK,” I said. “Did you see Doctor Yong today?”

“No time,” she said. “I have to workey.”

She’d made a remarkable recovery. I was starting to wonder if the suicide attempt had been sincere or if it had been merely a ploy to attract attention. I took her shoulders in my hands and stared directly into her eyes.

“And how are you?” I asked.

She shrugged. “OK. No more jump off King Club.” She shook her head vehemently. “No more. Now I make money.” She pointed her forefinger at the tip of her nose. “Now I take care of Miss Kwon. Make money. Pretty soon, I be happy.”

Miss Kwon said all this with a determination that seemed laughable, as if happiness were a thing she could construct. But I knew better than to smile as she said these things. Instead, I watched her. She stared back at me with an intensity that, for a moment, I found disconcerting.

“Nobody help Miss Kwon,” she said, “but I help Miss Kwon.” Then she turned and hobbled out of the OB Beer Stand.

I studied the waddling little rear of this serious young woman, glad-I think-that she’d overcome her despair. Then I chugalugged the rest of my beer and followed her out into the street.

I said goodbye to Miss Kwon, not wanting her to struggle alongside me on her single crutch. At one of the dark pedestrian lanes I told her she could return to the Seven Club now; I would go on to the UN Club to meet Jimmy Pak. But after I said goodbye to her and rounded the corner of the next dimly lit intersection I saw Jimmy Pak standing beneath a streetlamp, smiling.

Two bodyguards stood next to him. Not burly men, although the contours of muscles showed through their jackets. I saw it in their eyes and in the walnut-sized calluses on their knuckles: martial arts experts. Probably skilled in tae kwon do, the indigenous Korean form of karate, meaning “the path of kicking and punching.” Some young men had turned themselves into awesome physical machines designed to do just that: kick and punch.

Jimmy smiled even more broadly and opened his arms as if to hug me.

“Geogi,” he said. “My friend. How are you?”

“OK, Jimmy.” I didn’t step forward into his embrace.

He lowered his arms but his smile never faltered.

“We must talk,” he said.

“I thought you wanted to talk to me at the UN Club.”

“Right here is good, too.”

Jimmy Pak’s smile faded and I saw an expression I’d never seen on his face before: a frown. It made him look like a different man, a very frightening man.

“Mori Di,” he said. “You uncovered his bones. This cause much trouble in Itaewon.”

The two bodyguards were starting to step slightly away from Jimmy, as if to improve their angle of attack.

“What do you want, Jimmy?” I said.

“It’s not me,” Jimmy said. “It’s Snake. He wants to talk to you.”

“And I want to talk to him,” I said.

“Good. We go now.”

“Not now,” I said. “I’m busy.” I wasn’t happy with these conditions. No one, except Miss Kwon, would know my whereabouts. And she would know that I’d talked to Jimmy Pak, but not about Snake. “Give me a time and place.”

“The time is now,” Jimmy said. “And we’ll show you the place.”

“No. Make an appointment.”

I started to walk away. The two men scurried forward. I turned and reached inside my jacket, touching the hilt of my. 45, letting my jacket fall open. They stopped.

“If Snake wants to talk, all he has to do is give me a time and place,” I said.

Once again, Jimmy Pak smiled.

“You’re right, Geogi. I apologize. We’re just so anxious because so many things have been going wrong. How about tonight, at midnight?”

“Where?”

“My club.”

I thought about it. Then I said, “I’ll be there.”

And I’d notify Ernie and the desk sergeant at the Yongsan MP Station as to where I’d be and who I’d be talking to. I turned and walked down the alley. Jimmy’s two bodyguards went the other way. I heard them conferring with their boss as their voices faded.

I was about to step out of the narrow lane into the light of the Itaewon main drag when I saw Miss Kwon, standing in an alley, a worried expression on her face. I stopped, and was about to speak to her when something heavy cracked the back of my skull.

It didn’t hurt at that moment; it would later. The world started to spin, lights flashed, brightly at first, and then, as if someone was turning them off one by one, they began to fade. I felt my knees melting, and then a feeling like flying and then the world, spinning around, faded into darkness. Nothing but darkness. Complete and total.